30 Mar 2006
Technology's Just a .240 Hitter

An excellent essay on the pitfalls of adding technological complexity to an inherently simple sport. One thing that tech hasn't changed about the National Pastime is the timing of the game: baseball is the only major sport in the US that is not played to or by a clock: it's entirely self-timed and self-pacing. Which is oh-so-refreshing after watching the endless stream of timeouts called in the last 2 minutes of any football or basketball game, often to merely postpone an inevitable defeat.

Not that baseball doesn't have complexities of it own: I learned statistics while crunching numbers from the diamond, and I daresay that many another American of my age group did so as well. Fantasy baseball plays so much better than other mathematical sports diversions because of the games dependence on statistics.

Baseball is a simple game, really, played on fine green fields and requiring few adornments. So why does technology have to barge in and screw things up? Commentary by Tony Long.

(link) [Wired News]

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